Dallas Stars Blog

Observations from a 5-4 loss to Tampa Bay

On the one hand, you have to like the goaltending and the ability to score.

On the other…ouch.

The Stars allowed four power play goals against Monday and now have allowed 10 in five games. Their penalty kill is hitting at 60.0 percent _ dead last in the NHL. No other team has given up more than seven power play goals against, and 24 teams have given up 5 or less.

What’s more, the Stars allowed 40+ shots against (44) for the third time in five games and now are yielding 38.0 shots against per game _ ranking 29th in the league.

“We couldn’t kill a penalty to save our life,” a frustrated coach Marc Crawford said afterward. “We have to be better at that.”

While Brenden Morrow added that taking five penalties wasn’t the problem in this one.

“We really do feel we can score goals and we can put pressure on teams, but we just have to be better at that part of the game,” Morrow said of the penalty kill. “We only were on the kill five times, and some of those were penalties we had to take. When we take a penalty that we have to take, we need to be able to kill that penalty and make a statement that we’re standing up for each other.”

Morrow said that Mark Fistric’s penalty for roughing in the first period was one the team needed to kill. Fistric was protecting goalie Kari Lehtonen after a scrum in front of the Stars’ net, and killing the penalty would have sent a message.

“Fisty did exactly what he was supposed to do, so we need to bail him out there,” Morrow said. “We have to do that.”

The Stars’ penalty kill ranked 27th in the league last season and has been a focus of many practices. And Crawford said he is seeing progress in some details…just not enough.

“We did a lot of good things, but we just didn’t get in the lanes, and that’s discouraging,” Crawford said. “That’s such an important factor of a power play and a penalty kill, you have to get in the lanes and take away shots. We didn’t do it and they did.”

The Lightning had 10 shots on goal in their five power plays. The Stars had four shots on goal in their’s.

“You’ve got to get shots on goal,” said center Brad Richards, who had three shots blocked. “If we get 30 shots, maybe we win. But you can’t have four power plays with only two or three shots on them. It’s just not going to work. We have to play more simple, straight-forward hockey.”

The Stars had a chance to tie the game with a power play with the goalie pulled with a minute left in the game, but Tampa Bay held on for the win.

“(Special teams) is the one place where you usually win or lose games,” said defenseman Stephane Robidas. “We have to figure that out. It’s still early, but it seems right now we are not very sharp on the PK. We need to work harder and not give bad reads. We need to clean things up a bit and we’ll be fine.”

Dallas lost the battle of the faceoff circle at 29-37 (44 percent), but Mike Ribeiro won 12-of-19 (63 percent).

The Stars are scheduled to stay in Tampa and not practice. They are supposed to have a team-building day.

Jamie Benn missed his third straight game with concussion-like symptoms, but he could be back in Thursday at Florida.

Aaron Gagnon, who was called up from the Texas Stars, played 7:38 had one takeaway and won two faceoffs.